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Multicam Switching and Streaming Solutions for Remote Producers

Anthony Burokas of Stream4us runs through a litany of multicam switching and streaming software and their pros and cons for live producers working with multiple remote guests in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media East Connect 2021.

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Learn more about remote production at Streaming Media West 2021.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Anthony Burokas: Remote connections. Most of the time, your remote guests will not be tech-savvy, so having a tech check to walk through things is important.
The way they connect is also important. I personally use vMix. It's one of many tools and it has a very easy-to-use web interface for remote connections. I personally think it's even easier than Zoom and other business chat apps.

Now, vMix is one of many multi-camera live switching apps. vMix is Windows-only. OBS is another multi-camera live switching app. It's available for windows, Mac, and Linux. There's also the very similar Streamlabs OBS, which touts easier setup connection with their widgets and other Streamlabs offering. Vimeo has Livestream Studio, and that's available for both Windows and Mac. Telestream Wirecast is another long-running tool available for windows and Mac. Plus they also sell their own dedicated hardware to run it on as well. Boinx makes mimoLive, which is available for Macs. It's an up andcoming tool getting better and more powerful every year.

CamTwist Studio is one of the ones you might not have heard of, available for Mac. Cinamaker is an iOS app that is now available for Macintosh as well. Manycam is available for Windows and Mac, and has lots of features in this tool that not many people have heard of. There's also Ecamm Live, available for Mac. VidBlaster is available for windows. Anybody got a running tally--how many for Mac and how many for Windows? Broadcast Pix just introduced their own software called ChurchPix for Windows. Technically, it works outside of churches too. Longtime presentation software ProPresenter has also added live video-switching capabilities to ProPresenter. So now it's not just for presenting, but it's also live-switching, and you can do streaming within it as well.

And we cannot forget the NewTek TriCaster, which started the whole software-based multicamera switching thing as the VideoToaster 30 years ago, back in 1990. The TriCaster is a well-established software and hardware integrated solution that really needs to be included in any discussion of multicamera live switching.
I'm sure there are a couple others I may not have come across yet. If you know of one, comment, let me know what it is.

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